The Tunnel
by Gabi Howard
Summary: He remembered... what did he remember? Shouting, guns, blood, pain...


**The Tunnel**

He was lying on something cold and hard, his entire body complaining as a result. This wouldn't have been so bad had he actually known how he'd come to be there. Or who on earth he was. The latter would probably have been a better start, but with a jolt of apprehension he realised that he knew the answer to neither.

He opened his eyes, then closed them almost instantly as a too-bright light seared through his already aching skull. Rolling over, he held his hands to his face as he opened his eyes again, slowly parting the hands as his eyes adjusted to the light beyond. He blinked, looking around. He seemed to be at the bottom of something resembling a mine shaft- long and thin, walls lined with bricks and a concrete floor. To his right was a tunnel. Dark and seemingly endless, it was made of the same concrete as the floor he was lying on and about four metres in diameter. The floor was packed with dirt, filling the bottom half metre, with scraggly thorn bushes growing up the walls and reaching tendrils out across the ground.

But these only warranted a cursory glance. What was far more intriguing was the figure at the tunnel's entrance, its black eyes staring at an invisible something over his shoulder. It was a woman, as far as he could tell, made of wicker and seated on the edge of the soil, her hands folded in her lap. In itself, that wasn't too odd, but then he moved. The figure was still staring at something over his shoulder, only that something appeared to have moved along with him. He shuffled over to his right- again the figure's eyes seemed to shift, although in reality the thing hadn't moved at all.

Had he not already been keeping himself under rigid control, he may well have lost it then and there. As it was, he came very close. Drawing his knees to his chest, he forcibly calmed himself before allowing his mind to wander. He remembered… what did he remember? Shouting, guns, blood, pain…

_Kira-sama! Kami!_

That voice- whose was it? He knew it- he _knew_ he knew it- but he couldn't remember who possessed it, or why on earth it had been calling him God. And his name wasn't Kira, was it? It couldn't be: that was… English. An English girl's name, spelt oddly. And he wasn't English. At least, he didn't think he was, and he certainly wasn't a girl.

Enough of that. Speculation wasn't going to get him out of here- action was. He chuckled. That was so very unlike him…

Why? Laughter was ringing through his head with the same ghostly sound as the anguished 'Kira!' cries had possessed. That was it- he remembered something. Laughing. Laughing like an utter maniac, but laughing nonetheless- his memory was coming back! And the speculation-action thought had been unlike him because…

Because he had been a genius. He chuckled. _That_ was a mood-booster and no mistake: to recover from amnesia to find that his mind ranked with the likes of Einstein, though goodness knew he hadn't done anything as world-changing as the old man had.

Had he?

The statue continued to stare, and he realised with a start that he'd spent at least a minute lost in thought.

Which was probably not a good idea, considering the circumstances. Even as the thought ran through his head, the wall behind him began to crumble. _You agree, then?_ He thought sarcastically, realising that if he didn't get out, he would quite likely be crushed by the falling bricks. So now, a choice- stay here and die, or go on into the tunnel, and quite possibly die there too.

The fact that the second option meant possible rather than certain death made his choice fairly easy. He uncurled and leapt to his feet, jumping over the soil and somehow tripping over the knee of the statue as he did so. His hands flew out reflexively before him, narrowly missing a trail of thorns on the floor. His knees weren't so lucky, and he hissed in pain as another bunch of thorns cut straight through his trousers.

Forget them- there was rubble falling on his feet. He needed to move, and fast. He picked himself up and ran into the darkness, just ahead of the bricks until the moment they stopped falling, when he allowed himself to stop for a rest. The tunnel was pitch dark, effectively rendering him blind, and of course, he still didn't know where it led, or if the plants were the only life forms which inhabited it.

_Reason, don't abandon me now._ He implored silently, breathing deeply as he tried to regain control of himself.

Better.

Or not. Now the tunnel itself was collapsing, and he mentally scowled at whatever deity _had_ to be laughing at this as he ran on, bare feet grinding up the dirt beneath them. The soil was tight-packed at the bottom- gravity had made it so- but at the top, it was loose and crumbled easily, sliding backwards and dragging his feet with it. He stumbled, cursed and ran on, only to stumble again less than a minute later. The second time, his hands caught amidst the thorns. He picked himself up, cradling the damaged appendages to his chest and swearing once more as blood ran down his arms. He looked back; the tunnel behind him was still falling, but not so fast now. He could risk a slower pace.

Wait. He could see. He turned. Some kind of light was shining ahead- faint, but light nonetheless. He ran on, for the first time allowing some hope of escape to enter his mind. The light grew steadily brighter as he moved towards it, and the tunnel's fall continued to slow. He was sprinting now, breathing hard and stubbornly ignoring the pain in his legs. The light was almost blinding now- had he reached the end? He leapt, sensing rather than seeing the end of the tunnel. He was past it now- free…

_Welcome to death, Kira-sama._

The voice mocked him as it rang through his head, but he barely had time to register it as he fell into dust.


End file.
